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It’s National Nutrition Month

by | Feb 21, 2018 | 2018 February

healthy eating woman

Did you know that March is National Nutrition Month? It’s a great time to take a closer look at your family’s eating habits and, if needed, make a few adjustments. Making just a few changes to your daily diet can have long-term health benefits by lowering your risk for diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. [1]

Plan a healthy diet

Eating healthy requires a plan. For many of us, grabbing something quick when we’re hungry can lead to poor dietary choices. But if we plan ahead to ensure the items we have on hand are healthy, those quick snacks or meals can actually be good for us.

Some meal planning help

If you’re not already familiar with ChooseMyPlate.gov, take a moment to check out the website. You’ll find a ton of wonderful resources to help you and your family make good food choices. [2]

In fact, they have a sample 2-week meal calendar and accompanying grocery list to make it super easy to plan and prepare well-balanced meals. [3,4]

Here’s a sample 2-week menu:

And here’s the grocery list:

Make time to eat together

It seems we all lead increasingly busy lives. Meal time, unfortunately, is sometimes a casualty of our strained schedules. But did you know that studies show that eating meals together is associated not only with healthier eating habits, but healthier lifestyle habits?

According to an article in the Washington Post (The most important thing you can do with your kids? Eat dinner with them.), studies have shown that eating together is associated with “lowering a host of high risk teenage behaviors parents fear: smoking, binge drinking, marijuana use, violence, school problems, eating disorders and sexual activity.” [5]

Healthy eating in action

We really liked this video from ChooseMyPlate.org. It shows how people in all kinds of different situation are finding ways to plan and eat healthy:

Resources:

  1. https://www.choosemyplate.gov/men-and-women
  2. https://www.choosemyplate.gov/budget-sample-two-week-menus
  3. https://www.choosemyplate.gov/sites/default/files/budget/2WeekMenusAndFoodGroupContent.pdf
  4. https://www.choosemyplate.gov/sites/default/files/budget/2WeekMenusGroceryList.pdf
  5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/12/the-most-important-thing-you-can-do-with-your-kids-eat-dinner-with-them/?utm_term=.a544c69d245d